Since New York’s new Safe Act, gun enthusiasts at Westside Pistol & Rifle Range have felt under siege. In an exclusive interview, we get their view on gun control.

He stands at the front of the small classroom of skinny-jeans-wearing twenty-somethings, cocking a .22-caliber rifle.

“Welcome to Westside Pistol and Rifle Range,” he says. “Long before it became cool, hip and trendy to hate guns, there used to be more of us around the city.”

And thus begins the 7 p.m. rifle class at Westside Range on West 20th Street, taught by Howard Kwok.

Westside Pistol & Rifle Range, where many of the NYPD’s men and women in blue—and other gun enthusiasts—have come to train and practice, is the last of its kind in Manhattan. The range offers shooting classes and memberships, as well as firearms, and they help first-timers get their gun licenses.

Ever since the Newtown school shootings, and more recently, New York State’s new gun control legislation, the phone at Westside Rifle has been ringing off the hook. After Newtown, it was mostly media requests, most of which were refused.

“If you are a responsible gun owner, you are blamed when tragedies like this happen,” says Raymond Lacson, an instructor, who has worked at the Westside Range since 2009. “That’s the downside to being engaged in this type of sport.”

Since New York’s SAFE Act, new customers and regulars alike have been calling to ask how the legislation will affect them.

The new law is the strictest of all 50 states. It requires, among other things, that gun owners keep guns locked away and out of reach from those barred from gun ownership (i.e. felons, mentally unstable people and those who have served time for domestic abuse in the last five years). It also bans all ammunition magazines holding more than seven rounds and requires gun owners to go through a more rigorous mental health check, as well as update their gun permits every five years.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the new gun legislation is unpopular with the Westside Range. Lacson shakes his head and hesitates before offering his opinion on the new law.

“I agree with the mental health checks, but not with the other parts of the law,” he says, taking a magazine of bullets out of his handgun. “Right now, I have eight rounds in this gun. If I take one out, it’s considered safe by the government,” he says. “To me, a bullet is a bullet. One shot is one shot.”
Lacson says that the extensiveness of the law is really unnecessary in New York City, where it is already an extremely daunting and lengthy process to g et a gun license and buy a firearm. The NYPD approves all licenses, and the processing fee for a handgun license is $430, with a waiting period of five or six months. Halfway through that period, he says, the applicant meets with a psych evaluator, and goes through a background check. After approval, the applicant is given one month to choose a gun, and then the serial number of the firearm is stamped on the back of the gun license within three days of approval. Every time the applicant buys a gun, the process takes another two months.

He also says that licenses from out of state, and even gun licenses from upstate New York or Long Island, are not valid in the city.

Asked how the range deals with shady customers, or ones who make them uneasy, he says, “We try not to be judgmental, but we always send away drunk people,” Lacson says. “If there’s something off, the application and evaluation will take care of that.”

So, who does come to the shooting range?

Meet Francisco Castano, or Frank, as he’s known at Westside, a soft-spoken man who comes from Parkchester in the Bronx, and has been shooting for about a year. His attitude toward guns changed, he said, when he was working in the World Trade Center on 9/11, which made him feel that danger was lurking in unexpected places. He now owns a 9mm Glock for protection and security, to help out his family and people around him if they are ever threatened.

“People say gun owners are the ones who kill people, but that’s not true,” he says. “I don’t like the new law. They should really focus on the guns that are out there right now illegally on the street.”
Now, many members of the Westside Range community agree that guns, even legal ones, are a touchy subject. New Yorkers, they say, have an attitude vastly different from residents of other states and cities, where carrying around a concealed weapon is the norm.

Back in the beginner rifle class, Kwok is explaining different types of guns to his seven students.
“Automatic guns, commonly known as machine guns—don’t even ask me about those.” he says.

Students draw pictures of Mary and the baby Jesus in a 6th grade art class at Holy Cross School.

This year may be the last for six Catholic elementary schools in Manhattan. On Nov. 26, the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, which governs groups of Catholic Church parishes under the direction of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, announced the impending closure of 26 of its 159 elementary schools across the state. Six of those, including three on the Upper West Side, two uptown and one downtown, are in New York City.

Catholic schools across the nation have suffered from declining enrollments and tightening budgets for years, so the archdiocese decided to take a proactive approach to curbing losses by putting a condition on its most cash-strapped schools: Come up with a plan to turn things around by Jan. 3, or board up your windows and lock your doors come June.

This is not the archdiocese’s first round of hard cuts. At the end of 2010, the religious institution listed 32 of its elementary and high schools as “at risk” of closure. These schools saw a decline in enrollment of 71 percent over five years, according to the archdiocese’s announcement. When income from tuition drops below the cost of running a school, the archdiocese is forced to use its own resources to cover the deficit. Of the 32 at-risk schools, 28 were shut down the following summer.

“The plan is to create Catholic schools that are stable, viable and provide an excellent education, but that also provide those extras that parents seek for their children—computer labs, etc.,” explained Joseph Zwilling, the archdiocese’s director of communications.

The recent and impending closures are the culmination of the archdiocese’s three-year research and action plan called “Pathways to Excellence,” which aims to recalibrate the educational mission to ensure its longevity. According to the archdiocese’s website, “Today, the schools of the Archdiocese of New York are at a crossroads. … [Pathways to Excellence] is the beginning of a longer-term process for ensuring the future of the archdiocese’s elementary schools.”

While principals and parents of the schools at risk of closure agree with this initiative’s goal, they do not want to see their schools shut down. The schools still have an important place in the archdiocese’s vision, they argue.

“It’s a family here,” said Don Jovan, principal at Holy Name School on West 97th Street, which has been open for over 100 years. “It’s a great little place. We were hoping for a chance to build it up.”
He noted that the school’s academic performance has been excellent over the past four years and cited a wealth of extracurricular activities—including a mandatory theater arts program that prepares students for public speaking and performance—as an example of the school’s unique value to students.

Jovan admitted, however, that he understood the school’s grim financial situation; in his four years at the school, enrollment has dropped from 435 to 230 students.

“People can’t pay tuition in this economy,” he said. Over 90 percent of students in his school come from minority families. Still, he remained positive about the school’s future. “I’m hopeful that we’re going to have another breath of life,” he said.

Venus Trujillo, a mother of two children at Holy Name, helped circulate a petition to keep the school open among families and alumni of school.

“I can tell you as parents we are very disappointed,” she said. “Holy Name School is amazing and has the technology that many other schools in the area do not have for their students. The teachers are wonderful and really care for our children.”

Two principals of at-risk schools in Manhattan contended that in addition to quality programming, their schools’ diversity and history makes them worth preserving.

“Over 30 languages are spoken here,” said Sister Mary Theresa Dixon, principal of Holy Cross School on West 43rd Street. She emphasized that the school has provided a low-cost education to immigrant families since it opened 135 years ago.

“Our focus is to serve this immigrant population, and to provide the children with opportunities they wouldn’t have had before,” she said.

Principal Donna Gabella of St. Gregory the Great on West 90th Street called her school “a family community—a multi-racial, multi-generational community.”

“We serve a wide population across the boroughs,” she said. “We’re not your Wall Street people. We’re your everyday people.”

Catholic schools traditionally have served as a middle ground between public and non-denominational private schools, a low-cost, high-quality alternative to floundering public schools and unaffordable elite private institutions for students sometimes living in the city’s rougher neighborhoods. In hard financial times, however, Catholic schools increasingly have had to weigh the importance of retaining lower-income students against the need to raise tuition or focus funds on programming instead of student assistance to stay afloat.

Some Catholic schools in Manhattan have experimented with adjusting costs and have seen promising results. St. Stephen of Hungary School on East 82nd Street was once designated for closure, but began appealing to higher-income students by adding features like small class sizes and early-age extracurricular programs. Three years ago, the school’s annual fund raised $2,000. This year, it raised $120,000. Enrollment has soared.

Still, while international diversity remains strong, the school’s enrollment of African-American students has dropped, as has the number of students receiving free or reduced lunches. According to St. Stephen’s Head of School Katherine Peck, the school made the choice to reinvent itself based on the needs of the specific local community it serves. “In order for schools not only to survive, but to thrive, it has to be a community-based effort,” she said. “Every community is so different, with different programming needs. We wanted to be sure to provide what our community and neighborhood were in need of most.”

Peck acknowledged the challenge for schools like Holy Name whose needs outweigh their resources, and said that the burden was on those who believe in the value of a Catholic school education to donate to the schools.

“Right now Catholic schools are doing great, and yet we don’t have enough people out there willing to underwrite their costs,” she said. “Catholic schools are beneficial to everyone. If we have a system that is working and has a proven track record of success, there should be more people who are willing to support these schools and families financially.”

Donors are exactly what the at-risk schools were seeking as they scrambled to put together action plans that prove their sustainability over the coming years to the archdiocese. Parents and administrators worked together to host fundraisers, circulate petitions and reach out to alumni and elected officials for support. At Holy Cross School, the administration assembled a volunteer development committee that includes an attorney, a former admissions director at Penn State, a sales and marketing assistant and a grant writer. Downtown, State Sen. Dan Squadron and Assemblyman Sheldon Silver wrote to the archdiocese asking that St. James and St. Joseph School on Monroe Street remain open.

“Before closing this school, we ask that you please explore all possible options to keep it open or at least offer families a comparable choice for their children,” Squadron and Silver wrote. “The process ought to be carried out in consultation with the parents. This school is an important part of our community, and we urge you to pursue every available means to keep it open.”

Zwilling, the archdiocese’s spokesperson, claimed that the Archdiocese of New York does not anticipate another round of school closures after this summer’s.

“We hope this is the end of this

,” he said. Nevertheless, as long as hard financial times persist and free public charter schools, which often attract the same student populations as Catholic school, continue to proliferate, the fate of Catholic schools in Manhattan will remain uncertain.

“I’m fairly pessimistic [about Catholic schools’ future],” said Abraham Lackman, a scholar-in-residence at Albany Law School’s Government Law Center who recently published a paper on the effect of public charter schools on Catholic schools’ enrollments.

“My evidence shows that for every charter school that has opened in the last decade, a Catholic school has closed,” Lackman said. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that if 270 new charter schools are opened in the next decade, particularly in New York, the impact on the Catholic school system will be devastating.”

Lackman and Zwilling agree, however, that the disappearance of Catholic schools in Manhattan would be terrible for the city. “I think it would be a tragedy for education in general, and for poor districts particularly, if Catholic schools keep closing,” said Lackman, who argued that more choices for education is better for all students.

“Our schools are already overcrowded,” said Zwilling. “If we were to add a bunch of students back into the public system, it would be an enormous burden on taxpayers and the city.”

The six at-risk Manhattan schools, which also include Annunciation School on West 131st Street and St. Jude School on West 204th Street, already submitted their plans for survival to the archdiocese. According to Zwilling, the archdiocese will announce the final list of closures in the next two weeks.

BELLEVUE HOSPITAL REOPENS E.R.

Bellevue Hospital reopened its emergency department for limited services on Monday, Dec. 24, for the first time since Hurricane Sandy. The department is now staffed and receiving ambulances for the treatment of non-traumatic and non-critical injuries.

“Bellevue plays a vital role in the community, and we’re very pleased to be able to offer limited emergency department services there again,” said Alan D. Aviles, president of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC). “Tremendous credit is owed to the dedicated staff and physicians who have worked around the clock since Sandy to bring the facility back into service.”

Flooding during the storm disabled the hospital’s equipment and forced staff to evacuate its patients. The hospital has since gradually restored its services, including reopening outpatient clinics in November. According to the announcement of the emergency department’s opening, the department still will not operate as a Level 1 Trauma Center, and the hospital is working to ensure that only non-critical patients are brought in. Those who do arrive needing surgery will be stabilized and transferred to another facility.

The hospital hopes to return to providing its normal full range of services by February.

NY MUSEUM CELEBRATES  THE HOLIDAYS

On Monday, Dec. 10, the Museum of the City of New York was abuzz with its annual Children’s Holiday Party to benefit the Museum’s Frederick A.O. Schwarz Children’s Center, which funds social studies programs for local students and teachers. A tradition for more than 40 years, the afternoon was full of merrymaking with nonstop entertainment, kids’ activities and festive food.

The holiday celebration was sponsored by Milly Minis and came together thanks to the hard work of Co-Chairs Paige Hardy, Jill Ross, Michelle Smith and Yliana Yepez.

If you missed the party this year, you can still take part in a Charity Buzz Auction that is currently running through Jan. 16.

CHRISTMAS TREE CLEAN-UP

The Department of Sanitation (DOS) is currently running a Christmas tree collection for mulching and recycling. Through Saturday, Jan. 19, the department is encouraging residents to leave their trees by the curb in front of their homes for pick-up. Tree stands, tinsel, lights and ornaments should be removed, and the trees should not be placed in plastic bags. According to DOS, the trees will be chipped into mulch that will be distributed to parks, playing fields and community gardens throughout the city.

The Department of Parks and Recreation is also holding a “Mulchfest” next weekend, Jan. 12 and 13, at designated sites around the city. Residents can bring their trees to be chipped into mulch that will be used as ground cover for the city’s plants, and free mulch will be given to anyone who brings a bag to transport it.

Local Pedro Yanowitz checks out the Fuji apples at the Union Square Farmers’ Market. Photo by Aaron Adler

Maybe you want to eat right in 2013 but, like most New Yorkers, you’re always in a hurry, and making good nutrition a priority doesn’t come as easily as it should.

Fortunately, there are ways to turn that perception around.

Farmers’ markets, like those open year-round in Union Square, on Greenwich Street in Tribeca and other spots in downtown Manhattan, allow you to buy “clean, organically grown produce, which is not only good for overall health but also decreases your body’s overall exposure to toxins,” according to Mary Barbour, a raw food and vegan personal chef who has been frequenting the Union Square market since 1994.

“If your goal is to eat better or lose weight, then eating more fruits and vegetables will help you achieve that goal,” Barbour says of the market’s ample offerings.

“Adding more whole, plant-based foods to your diet is the healthiest thing you can do, and farmers’ markets make it easy,” says Maria Guadagno, a health coach and natural food chef.

While many of the markets’ offerings are already cheaper than what you would find at a health food store or regular supermarket, Barbour says that to get the best deals, you should wait until the market’s closing for reduced prices.

“Showing up week after week doesn’t hurt either,” she adds. Developing a relationship with growers also helps you understand exactly what you’re buying and what to do with it.

Guadagno says the markets are extremely accessible and most of the produce has been picked the same day or the day before.

People may have the perception that farmers’ markets are less prevalent—or have less bounty—in the winter, but Barbour says that’s “definitely not true.”

“It’s the time of year for heartier and root vegetables like cauliflower, cabbages, beans, potatoes, onions, parsnips and beets,” she explains. “You can get your dark leafy greens from collards. I like to think of it as comfort-food season, when you can make delicious soups, pot pies and roasted vegetables.”

Farmers’ markets offer many seasonal items that cannot be found in grocery stores.
“The market in the wintertime is magical,” says Guadagno, noting that leafy greens are a smart addition to any meal.

Barbour urges farmers’ market newbies to set realistic goals, as we should all do when it comes to new year’s resolutions.

“I like to tell people to not get too ambitious with the farmers’ markets,” she says. “It’s horrible to buy lots of perishables and then throw them out because they were unused.”

Barbour says if you’re pressed for time, juice bars can be a helpful, nutritious alternative to grabbing the whole foods yourself.

“One Lucky Duck, Liquiteria or Whole Green are great for juices,” she says. “It’s like having all your servings of daily veggies in a cup.”

Guadagno recommends the vegetarian restaurant Rawvolution on 12th Street.

“Have the Big Matt,” she says. It’s “a vegan take on the hamburger, made with mushroom.”

Guadagno also speaks highly of Maoz, a chain falafel shop, and Westerly, a health food store in Midtown.

You certainly don’t have to go vegan to eat healthy this year, but shopping farmers’ markets and increasing your general fresh-produce intake will go a long way toward facilitating better and easier nutrition.

What’s going to be the biggest news story to come out of your district in 2013?

Garodnick: Dan Garodnick will kiss every baby in Council District 4 in support of his reelection bid.

Quart: As the first phase of the Second Avenue Subway moves closer to completion, the MTA is going to have to start planning for the next phases of this project. We’ll begin discussing the next phases of construction and how to fund it.

What’s going to be the biggest political upset in 2013?

Garodnick: Hillary Clinton will take Mayor Bloomberg’s advice and run for mayor, but she will lose in a nail-biter to a young, charismatic politician who comes out of nowhere and gives better speeches. He is gracious enough to give her a deputy mayor post.

Quart: Scott Stringer winning comptroller. He has some serious competition in that race.

What will be the single most important development for the downtown community in 2013?

Garodnick: With the Roberts settlement announced, 2013 will be the year Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village tenants get management to work with them on a condo conversion, and begin the process of taking ownership of their community.

What’s one thing that everyone thinks will happen in 2013 that probably won’t?

Garodnick: Joe Lhota will lose the Republican nomination for mayor when his campaign is saddled by allegations that sometimes the MTA’s trains are late.

Who will win the Super Bowl in 2013?

Garodnick: Giants. I got this right last year, so why stop now?

Quart: Anybody but the Patriots.

Read our predictions on literature, Broadway, politics and fashion.

A woman walks along the East River Esplanade near the Queensboro Bridge.

The East River Esplanade bore some of the worst of Hurricane Sandy’s wrath. Stretching from East 60th to 125th Street along the water, the pedestrian walkway was the first area on the Upper East Side to be hit by the storm’s tidal surges, before they flooded forward as far as Second Avenue on some streets. Now, two months after the storm, city workers are still assessing the extent of the damages and considering the esplanade’s future to determine the best approach to repairs.

“When in doubt, assume a section of the esplanade was underwater and covered with debris,” said Mark Vaccaro, the Upper East Side’s Parks and Recreation manager. He attended a recent Community Board 8 Parks Committee meeting to share what his department has been dealing with since Sandy hit. “You can pretty much assume the plant life along the esplanade is toast,” he added.

Vaccaro walked the entire esplanade after the storm and took pictures of the sea rails, walking path and flora to catalogue damages. A team of engineers, he said, also rode in a boat alongside the esplanade to inspect its walls. Together, they determined that none of the damage was life-threatening. Small pieces of the capstones between the walkway’s seawall and railing were knocked out in 122 places. Several large chunks of the wall itself were stripped off and washed away. At East 66th, 79th and 117th streets, small gaps between the seawall and platform had formed, which, if not repaired before the next instance of flooding, could be filled with water that would push the wall out and collapse parts of the esplanade.

Around half of the walkway’s trees were dead, he said. The London plane trees were dormant and survived, but the oaks and cherries, along with the walkway’s shrubs and grass, were still drawing water and drowned. (Had the storm hit a month later, he noted, plant life would have been much safer, because almost all of it would have been “asleep.”) Many lampposts continued to work, but Vaccaro warned that salt water damage to their circuitry meant that “at some point, there are going to be a lot of electrical problems out there.”

“We really took a huge hit from this storm,” he said, noting that more parks in the neighborhood had been closed than in downtown Manhattan. But on the esplanade, he emphasized, “It’s not a safety issue. It’s a maintenance issue, an issue of repair.”

What form repairs will take is controversial, because Upper East Siders have been lobbying for an improved waterfront for years. Even before the storm hit, the walkway was riddled with sinkholes and uneven surfaces over sections that were built over 60 years ago. Whether the city will make only superficial repairs or invest in a long-term transformation is a big issue for many community members.

“I know this sounds terrible, but I was hoping that the hurricane actually damaged the esplanade to such an extent that the city would have to pay attention to it—without anybody being injured, of course,” said Teri Slater, a CB8 member. “What’s happening on the esplanade is plastic surgery on a decaying infrastructure.”

Jane Swanson, chief of staff for Councilwoman Jessica Lappin, agreed that the storm might end up being “a blessing and a curse” for the walkway.

“It’s an opportunity now,” she said at the committee meeting. “I hate to say it that way, but it does force us to look at [the esplanade] and say, ‘Hmm, okay, what can we do with regard to making this safe in the event of storms, while also making it a compelling and wonderful place for us to enjoy?’”

Swanson said that in order to proceed, however, the board would have to wait for a full engineering study of the esplanade that analyzes the many different ways it was constructed over years of additions and renovations. This study has been in progress and was planned to be finished around the end of the year, but now its projected completion date has been pushed back to February or March because of the storm.

“It’s hard to provide a big bulk of funding [for a renovation project] if you don’t know what that is,” Swanson said. She added that after Mayor Michael Bloomberg presents his next preliminary fiscal year budget in January, however, her office will have a better sense of how they can allocate funds to push the project forward.

Fast-forward to today, and you can see how MTA public transportation is still one of the best bargains in town.
—Larry Penner

DEFYING COMMON SENSE
To the Editor:
It defies common sense that any municipality would place a transfer station of this scope in a densely populated residential neighborhood. The number of garbage trucks alone will overwhelm the narrow streets. No other facility of this kind is anywhere near a New York City neighborhood, especially one with so many children and schools. This area of Yorkville is a beautiful, quiet corner of the city with Carl Schurz Park and Gracie Mansion only a few blocks away. Has the mayor or Christine Quinn ever really spent any time here? The existing facility has been closed for years because of its negative impact on the community. No amount of modernization can deflect its impact. I feel that the community is actually being victimized because there are no powerful development interests here. Can you imagine the mayor trying to place this facility in the “hot” Tribeca area or near the new West Side developments? In addition, trying to paint this neighborhood as part of the elite Upper East Side is disingenuous. This is a working-class Manhattan neighborhood. Not that it matters. This does not belong near anyone’s home or school. Everyone needs to continue to remind our mayor that this facility is unacceptable, and to remind Quinn that we vote.
—Sharon Wolf Horowitz

“It’s that time of year. This is what we get on the Upper East Side,” said Officer Tarik Hunter, the 19th Police Precinct’s crime prevention specialist. He cited eight reported incidents of pickpocketing in his district since August, most of which have occurred in the past month. This increase mirrors last year’s numbers, and, as Hunter emphasized, only accounts for thefts that have been reported to NYPD: Many people do not realize that their belongings are missing until well after the incident, he said, so they are not sure if they were robbed or simply lost something.

A community affairs officer in Midtown North, Manhattan’s 18th Precinct, confirmed a similar spike in larcenies in his district. “It’s usually the same [each year],” he said, and added that the city’s heavily commercial areas endure a regular holiday increase in shoplifting as well as pickpocketing.
Thefts are, indeed, up across the city this month in keeping with annual trends, the NYPD reported. As well as in crowded public transportation vehicles, they said that many sneaky crooks strike in restaurants, bars and outdoor benches, where absent-minded visitors sometimes leave bags unattended and ripe for picking.

“I’m surprised. I haven’t heard of any [increase],” said John Barrett, a commuter waiting at a bus stop along Madison Avenue, whose buses have been heaviest hit by Upper East side pickpockets, according to Officer Hunter. “Pickpockets—that sounds like something from Charles Dickens.”
Despite his startled reaction, Barrett said that he is diligent in guarding his belongings on public transportation, and checks his pockets whenever someone brushes against him—a habit that he says has won him more than a few mean looks from innocent passersby. “It’s so quick that somebody can take your stuff and leave with it,” he said. “I just try to take precautions.”

Another bus rider was less surprised to hear about the holiday-time thieves. “I’m a New Yorker wherever I go,” said Peggy McDermott-Roberts, a city native who recently returned from a trip to California. “I look at my purse 29 times before and after I get on any bus.” She noticed that on her return to the city, people seemed more anxious on public transport around this time of the year, a bit more frenzied and less attentive.

A third commuter, Sandra Hasman, attributed the increase in thefts to the city’s seasonal influx of tourists. “There are so many more out-of-towners here for the holiday,” she observed. The NYPD confirmed that tourists were prime targets for pickpockets, because they tend to be less aware of the danger and more preoccupied with navigating the city.

However, locals are always at risk, too, officers emphasized. According to an NYPD safety report, pickpockets often hit crowds on bus or subway rides when passengers are so crammed together that it is hard to distinguish the feeling of a sneaky hand. New York pickpockets are also known to orchestrate some elaborate distractions, like a staged shouting match between two apparent strangers, to hold commuters’ attention long enough to steal from them.

The NYPD is taking measures to combat the annual spike, but they say that the best prevention is awareness. Use handbags with zippers and locks, they recommend, and never carry wallets in back pockets. If your find your pocket picked on a bus or train, they suggest that you immediately yell out to warn passengers and the driver / conductor. In their words, “Don’t be afraid to be loud.”

The Protagonist interviewed several New Yorkers this week with the goal of better understanding the incredibly complex psychology behind the act of subway reading.

Anticipating primarily tales of the embarrassment surrounding reading something too “trashy” or juvenile, or, alternatively, something too pretentious, and how all this is impacted by the omnipresence of e-readers, or even how hard it is to focus on one’s book at all with all these coursing thoughts, I stumbled across a different, more prevalent phenomenon altogether.

While New Yorkers are overwhelmingly most embarrassed to be caught reading the “dorky” stuff, the fact is this: subway reading has gotten too damn sexual.

If it’s not the subway-reading-pickup-game — with book as mere conduit for something much more improper — it’s secret or not-so-secret pornographic reading, a whole universe of secret sex codes, presumptions about others’ sex lives and so on.

Kambri Crews, an author herself, who publicly reads whatever she wants (including Harry Potter) reserves judgment of what others read…for the most part.

“I always notice what others are reading but usually don’t think much of it,” says Crews. “Unless it’s some young kid with fake glasses reading Anna Karenina or something lofty and I think, ‘Yeah, right. Whatever,’ and sprain my eye muscles from rolling them so hard.”

Does anyone show an interest in what she’s reading? “Only men who are looking for action ever comment on what I’m reading,” says Crews.

According to comedian and prolific subway-reader Dan Nainan, “The thought of having to sit on the subway with nothing to do is unacceptable.”

Nainan doesn’t care what people think of his literary choices. “A friend of mine, Steve Chandler, wrote a fantastic book called 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself,” Nainan explains. “One of his tips asks, why should what someone else thinks affect how I feel?”

But then the plot thickens. “I will say that reading Fifty Shades of Grey on the subway has been quite interesting,” says Nainan. “Would you believe that I’ve had a few women start conversations with me about that book? One of these conversations even led to a date.”

Nainan offers an observation: “I see many women reading this book, all of them are reading it on e-readers – I think they are too embarrassed to actually read the physical book itself…some of them glance around furtively to make sure that nobody is seeing them read the book.”

“If a man were looking at pornography on the subway, or anywhere else in public, he would be excoriated,” he says. “Apparently, it’s okay for women to read pornography on the other hand.”

Another subway reader, Emily Glickman, echoes Nainan: “Recently I saw a woman openly reading Fifty Shades of Grey, the physical book, and thought that was a little off.”

Brooklynite Shelley Chapman, who says: “Electronics nowadays emit levels of radiation that can bother [her] after a while,” to explain her support of physical books, is not afraid to advertise her presumptions about others based on what they read.

“If I noticed someone reading a book titled My Baby Daddy Part 3, I’d wonder how in the heck they even managed to read Part 1 and 2,” says Chapman.

“Admittedly, there are a few books depending on the cover illustrations that I won’t as readily read on the train,” she says. “Such as my books on Tantra.”

With all the judgment, it’s no wonder some readers are a little self-conscious. Dustin Nelson remembers reading Nicholson Baker’s House of Holes on the train and feeling “a little weird about [it.]”

“I thought someone was going to see one of the chapter titles sitting next to me, since the chapter titles there are pretty dirty,” Nelson explains. “Maybe they’d think I was coming onto them with my book.”

Hunt Ethridge, on the other hand, isn’t afraid to confess his literary interests aren’t exactly pure: “I subscribe to the Erotica Center on my Kindle and on slow, cold days, I may read something spicy on my way home. That’s when it’s the best!” Others agree they use e-readers if they plan to read something a little personal, like a self-help book.

Hashim Locario, a dating coach and author, has even more aggressive intentions. Locario wrote a book for men called How to Have Sex with 2 Women a Day.

“When I first got the hard copies of the book printed I would read it on the train so people could see what I was reading,” says Locario. “Women would give me strange looks and men would always ask me where I got the book.”

“I actually sold a couple on the train that way,” he says.

Locario adds: “I actually used to pick up girls by approaching them and asking them about what they were reading.”

In fairness, some New Yorkers interviewed also had far more innocent intentions when they sparked up a conversation about books, or approached subway reading in general.

Christina DiRusso says she “love[s] giving out recommendations and always asks for ideas back.”

Bob Madison and his husband often read aloud to each other on the subway.

“This can sometimes raise eyebrows when it’s something like Tik-Tok of Oz,” he explains. “Just a couple of weeks ago we were reading Fer-der-lance, the first Nero Wolfe mystery on the train, and found a bit that was so smartly written and so funny that we were howling all the way to Chambers Street.”

Madison adds: “Then my husband was reading The Gods of Mars, an old adventure novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and he read a particularly over-the-top bit to me that I’m sure must’ve raised the eyebrows of anyone listening.”

While using books to pick up dates is far from a new phenomenon, The Protagonist is left wondering if the ubiquity of e-readers puts a damper on the process, or facilitates it further. One thing is for sure, e-readers make it more difficult to form an assumption based on what’s being read, though as some point out — at the very least they do make a statement about someone’s disposable income level.

Whatever the motive, it’s safe to say, when people idly read on the subway, they usually aren’t just idly reading. And the people casually not looking? Well, you know.

By Aaron Adler

Two members of Housing Works, a New York-based healthcare and AIDS advocate group, climbed two 40 foot flagpoles at the southern end of City Hall Park in lower Manhattan on Wednesday around 10:45 a.m. The activists, wearing helmets and climbing gear, unfurled a 30 foot banner that read “HOUSING IS HEALTHCARE: HOUSE PEOPLE LIVING WITH HIV/AIDS” after quickly climbing to the top of the flagpoles without being noticed by several police officers in the vicinity.

Police quickly arrived and blocked the sidewalk and the area immediately under the flagpoles and brought in a cherrypicker to bring down the activists. Other Housing Works activists held signs and cheered on Tony Ray and the other unidentified flagpole climber from the ground.

“I am up here today because of the lack of attention to housing for people with AIDS.” said activist Tony Ray through a megaphone high above the crowd, “If people with AIDS have a safe place to live, and a place for them to refrigerate their meds, they are going to stay healthy.”

The two activists stayed on the flagpoles for around 25 minutes before they were removed peaceably by the NYPD and arrested without incident.

The civil disobedience came two days before World Aids Day, a global day of remembrance of those lost to the disease.